


hope at the bottom of the box

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, Could Be Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28837293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: He watches Jack hover one hand over Tommy's shoulder, dutiful, obeisant. The way things always have been. Breathing out and steeling himself, Tubbo lets a chuckle escape like steam from a valve. Dream is harmless now. The discs are in their hands. Maybe being a paranoid bastard has helped him before, but not in the company of friends. Not with the girl who baked him bread. Not with the boy who built him rockets.---Despite his holding Tubbo hostage, threatening the discs and generally being a terrible person, Dream has been thwarted. Project Dreamcatcher is a resounding success. Some of his victims have visited the prison to watch him rot, and Tubbo is trying to relearn what relaxation feels like. Then it all goes wrong.
Relationships: Jack Manifold & Niki | Nihachu, Jack Manifold & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Ranboo & Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 17
Kudos: 125
Collections: Anonymous





	hope at the bottom of the box

"You're done. It's done, it's-it's over," Tommy mutters again and again with his back to the viewing window. It's fine, Tubbo decides, gnawing at his cuticles as if that will warm them up. Of all people Tommy is allowed a little insanity, now that it's really all over. Adrenaline doesn't just _stop_ when the prey is dead, that's what Techno always said. Before he became a total traitorous arsehole, like, but advice doesn't stop being good with its bearer. If it did he wouldn't be sitting here now.

What to do, with that now? With a trembling Ranboo at their side they're on awkward vigil in Pandora's Vault, or more accurately above it. Convincing Sam to keep the prison's fucking commissioner inside it had cost Tubbo an arm and a leg and one very snotty speech. Convincing him to let them _see_ Dream's punishment took far longer and every emerald he'd ever stolen from anarchists or bartered from villagers.

Worth it, though. Dream looks smaller, without his power and his armour and his bloody great axe. He looks like a skinny, pale man in a ratty hoodie and a scrawled mask. And that's all. The sight is...nothing short of fucking magical. It feels like all the horror and misery, if only for a day or two, has been sucked from Tubbo's brain. Of course Tommy, who won't even look at the cell, doesn't feel the same way. That's okay. They finally have each other, and neither hell nor high water could convince Tubbo to leave his side ever again.

When footsteps pad down the walkway, the expensive clacking of boots on obsidian, it is admittedly quite sad that they both jump to attention with their fists up. But it's nothing to be afraid of, for once. That'll be something to get used to.

"Oh my God, do you ever stop talking?"

It's Niki, and...and Jack. Huh. That's odd, but not unwelcome. There's a newly feral glint in her gaze, a wildness to the way she leans over the railing, exchanging obscene gestures with the man in the mask through a curtain of ruffled pink curls. "We thought we would stop by, to bully the green man a little bit." She giggles and it comes out like a cackle - Tommy wrinkles his nose behind her back and wiggles his fingers in a rather rude way.

Vaguely, Tubbo knows she's been through a lot. All kinds of delusions, apparently, and Jack says she's been upset ever since she accidentally burned down the L'Mantree. Does it make him a bad person, he ponders, that he doesn't really care about trees right now? At least it makes her feel important.

"I do!" Tommy says to answer her question, with a last push of enthusiasm. "You fuckin' know it, Nihachu. Here, see, I...I can be quiet." And he does, very disconcertingly, sink into a tangle of hair and bones against the wall. From the corner where he's reading, Ranboo lets out an animalistic chitter of concern before clapping his claws over his mouth and hunkering back down. In a room this small, with this many eyes on him, Tubbo can't blame the kid for folding his lanky limbs as out of the way as possible. It's hard to reconcile that he's older than Tommy when they're both trembling and huddled behind tatty old books.

Jack just breathes out through his nose by way of greeting, long and low and friendly. He takes off his glasses and folds them over the neckline of his tunic. It's too warm, Tubbo knows, for anywhere but Snowchester - he appreciates Jack wearing it anyway. He's always been a good friend, and Tubbo wants to say something about it. About how as Tommy heals, and he himself takes on the weight of that bombastic little world, he appreciates knowing someone else will take on some of the weight. A secondary Atlas seems like the kind of role he would play well and humbly, in Tubbo's opinion. Like Niki, he's always been a follower.

The words all melt on his tongue like lingering frost as he makes eye contact with Jack. His eyes are as flat and brilliant as Eret's, as mismatched as Ranboo's and as wide as Tommy's ever were. Weirder things have happened to people's bodies thanks to meddling and foul play, so he doesn't say anything about it, but the glowing is certainly new. And. Kind of unsettling, when he's known Jack all their lives.

Maybe he won't have to be the grown-up one for the next stage of it, not anymore. Maybe Niki and Jack and Tommy and Ranboo and him can all just be...young adults. Teenagers, yeah. They can make an apiary, and live in Snowchester together forever, and have parties where nobody gets hurt, and make things up with Phil and Techno, and he is getting the fuck ahead of himself.

"It's gonna be okay, y'know," one of his oldest friends says quietly and with uncharacteristic tact. "In the end." He's right! Weird eyes or not, Jack Manifold is always right. As he walks across the room, leaving Tommy to the ministrations of a man wearing a Snowchester uniform over a suit, Tubbo nods like a bobblehead and tries to push down the capricious bubbling of suspicion in his throat. He goes to close the door behind the unlikely pair, and begins to think.

Trust noone, Quackity had said. Trust noone. Not even the original members of L'Manberg, that had been implied, even the post-war additions that had come to visit now. But Jack always, always says that things are going to be okay! And isn't that nicer? Isn't that more palatable? Aren't you a smart lad to remember it? Now that Dream's no longer a threat, isn't it _true,_ Tubbo?

He watches Jack hover one hand over Tommy's shoulder with minimal jealousy, the gesture dutiful, obeisant. The way things always have been. The way, for the sake of Tommy and everyone orbiting his sputtering sun, they should be. Breathing out and steeling himself, Tubbo lets a chuckle escape like steam from a valve. Dream is harmless now. The discs are in their hands. Maybe being a paranoid bastard has helped him before, but not in the company of friends. Not with the girl who baked him bread. Not with the boy who built him rockets.

So Tubbo is relaxed, for the first time in months, when Jack swallows and netherite glitters and Tommy slumps to the floor and his body does not disappear. Quite a lot of things happen at once, then.

Tommy does not move. Ranboo makes a strangled, utterly inhuman sound and dissolves into a purple billow. Tommy does not move. From behind them Niki lets out a wail of grief and rage and repulsed satisfaction, a wrenching choked-off sob that Tubbo will never forget as long as he lives, and falls roughly to her knees. Tommy does not move. Jack's eyebrows furrow in concern for her even as he bundles Tubbo into a hug - "I did it, I did it, you're safe, finally, it's okay, it's over, he's done," - and only stops talking when a flailing fist knocks his glasses clean off the jacket and they go skittering across the floor. Tommy does not move.

Below them Dream falls back on his elbows and laughs through the pain, and laughs, and laughs, and does not stop, and there are alarms ringing, and there are guards arriving with a series of sickening pops that taste like ozone and anxiety, and Tubbo is done trying.

**Author's Note:**

> according to ao3 statistics, only the cool portion of you drop a quick kudos and maybe even a comment with your thoughts :)


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